How to work/ be in real life

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Has anyone been able to quit while working a full time job? Does anyone have advice for quitting when you still have to maintain a high stress job/ career? Especially after over achieving while on adderall? Do you ever recover to the point where you can focus and right fire emails and get shit done? I work in logistics in NYC and my job/ life are super fast paced. You need to be on top of everything and respond quickly to problems. Laying on the couch for a week or so is definitely not an option (which is how I quit the last time about 5 years ago).

I know that adderall life is not sustainable and I’m tired. Its just hard to remember myself before adderall. It’s hard to remember what’s so good about regular life. I don’t know what my personality is/ was. Sometimes I think that when I do get my head clear I won’t recognize the person that comes out. It’s scary. But anyway I read about real life on here and see people around me who seem happy and fulfilled. So there has to be something good about it.

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I feel it will be very hard to keep up that fast pace career quitting and still working just being honest. Think you need to determine if your still functioning at a high level on this drug fact is it stops working for all of us and at some point and we actually become somewhat lazy and very unfocused. The only thing we want is more adderall chasing that euphoria feeling that has faded away. If you are still doing your best on it how’s your health? Is this career and taking adderall worth some the serious health risk? Is taking it daily something you can continue doing until retirement or heart attack whichever comes first. If someone can make millions in 7-10 years on adderall have money invested then quit think it’s worth the risk. For everyone else we fucked up and should never have taken it.

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many people recover from amphetamines while holding down a full-time job. of course, if you have the luxury of taking a week off or so, it will definitely help. the more important thing is to have a plan. you're obviously not going to be delivering at the rate you were before, so a part of your plan should be how to manage your boss's expectations of you. if you feel secure enough, you may even consider having a conversation with him/her to explain that you're going through some stuff and if it seems like you're lower energy, that's why. many managers value honesty in these situations - i'd rather know about it up-front so deadlines / workloads can be adjusted accordingly.

another thing you may discover once you stop speeding is that perhaps your job/life was artificially fast paced. of course NYC is notorious for high stress / high reward culture, but adderall is absolutely inflating this condition. the thing is, everything is so enjoyable on speed that you may spend 30 minutes on an email when all the task required was 5. its really hard to see these things until you stop the drugs. for the first few months into recovery, you need to get a feel for a task's bare minimum effort requirement, but also the effort required to not set off any alarms with your boss (hence the expectation management above).

there's no silver bullet or easy answer to this. like @Frank B said, the speed is going to stop working at some point. might not be for another couple of years, but it's a biological certainty. the longer you take it, the harder it will be to get clean. you need to make a choice NOW.

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I think I accidentally flagged those as I haven’t been active on the forum before. I’ve lurked for probably 9 years.

Thanks for your detailed responses. I am completely certain that I need to quit. No doubt about it. I’m not ready to talk about specifics but as you know it’s just hard.

i want to come up with a plan but I’m overwhelmed by the thought of that alone. I quit 6 years ago bc I had major panic attacks then went back. Now I take more than ever and I’m stuck. I’m also on lexapro and I think it allows me to take more adderall without the anxiety. I have stopped for up to a week or so at a time sleep a lot but can function. Then the second week usually I freak out cuz I’m not getting shit done and go back to adderall. Fuck

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Nobody knows what your particular withdrawal will be like. Most are fine after about a week. Some of us here were crippled for at least a year with no memory or cognitive function and sleeping 12+ hours a day. The lexapro withdrawal could severely fuck you up too. There's websites for quitting those too. All this shit is poison and isn't fixing a thing.

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I agree everyone is different in their recovery. I have seen a "few" posts on this site and others that state they feel fine after a short time however I would say this is a low percentage of individuals.

As for work/life after adderall I can say in the first year I was on the brink of closing my bushiness giving up; felt like I was truly planning my "end of days" in ways. I ended up with almost every credit card I had near max. I lost clients, staff and family were all questioning what was wrong with me. I only confided in a couple supportive people in my life.

With time and finally getting the will power and strength to begin fighting back; I forced myself to function even on my worst days. Now in just the past 6mo I have been able to turn profitable again, paid every credit card off but one and got my credit score from a low of around 650 to high 800's; I have never had a better credit score than now even before or during adderall.

I wont make this all sound too positive and cheery as I still have my ups and downs. I have days and moments I feel near 100% normal and lows that hit out of nowhere that feel like the early days of quitting. My drive persists however as just a small "feeling good moment" is enough of a reward to keep battling.

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I think it depends how much you were taking. I also struggled with not remembering who I was before quitting. I don't think that's a bad thing though, you can be whoever you want and it will probably be better than a life on Adderall no matter what. Since you can't take time off I'd just recommend early bedtimes and having rewards set up for the weekends. Maybe try cutting back on drinking too for the week to help with energy in the morning! Best of luck

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If trying to keep a job my guess is you will need to taper off very slowly over a long duration of time. I stopped cold turkey and that was horrible. I don’t know if anyone here had better results from tapering off but it couldn’t hurt. The hard part about tapering is that you will still have a supply and will be super tempting to increase dose as soon as feeling awful

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If trying to keep a job my guess is you will need to taper off very slowly over a long duration of time. I stopped cold turkey and that was horrible. I don’t know if anyone here had better results from tapering off but it couldn’t hurt. The hard part about tapering is that you will still have a supply and will be super tempting to increase dose as soon as feeling awful

I tapered my second and successful time quitting. It was done in a 3 month period with a date set in stone last day to take it. My drug dealer I mean doctor recommended a year step down but I didn’t have the patience for that but knowing the first time I failed after a month going cold turkey I did want some sort of step down. Your either going to quit or not so if you can’t control your dosage to step down chances are your not serious about quitting. Just my thoughts some disagree believe in the cold turkey method only but I tried it once just did not work for me.

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Like others have said, I think tapering really helps ease the transition. I started tapering in June from a 30 mg dose and finally quit after thanksgiving (I had previously used up to 60, but was on about 30 pretty consistently for at least 10 months prior to the taper). Don’t get me wrong, it hasn’t been easy. But I feel like coming off adderall and seeing things for what they are has helped me realize that adderall largely just provides a false sense of security. I think the addiction and habitual use distorts your thinking and you start to believe adderall is doing all these wonderful things for you. I think we tend to exaggerate the benefits of adderall and don’t give ourselves enough credit. Yes it will be hard to detox, but honestly it’s been a little easier than I expected. Disclaimer though- I’ve been taking Wellbutrin since I quit and think it’s helped a lot. So I would recommend just fully commit to a gradual taper, consider taking antidepressants to help ease the withdrawal and transition back to real life, and allow yourself to slowly get back to being your best self- one day at a time. Also, distract yourself. I got a new puppy and he’s been pretty distracting. But go easy on yourself and don’t expect too much too soon. Expect to be lazy and unproductive for a bit. I’m having to relearn the skill of willpower and just tell myself to suck it up and do it, even if I do it in tons of little baby steps. Breaking things up helps and just keep telling yourself to do the next thing. I give myself inner pep talks/lectures—like just get it done, doesn’t have to be perfect. You are in control. Just accept that it’s a gradual process and go with it. It was crazy to me how quickly I forgot I was off adderall.

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Taking an antidepressant might make you feel better in the short term but it is ultimately just a variant of a taper and will introduce it's own adaptations that will cause more withdrawals. The "best" drug for adderall withdrawal is wellbutrin/bupropion because they're both NDRIs but W/B will take weeks to reach full effect and can cause its own severe withdrawal lasting years. It's also notorious for causing seizures. I took it for years and the extreme withdrawal from it is what made me display ADHD symptoms that made them put me on adderall in the first place. It increases dopamine and adrenaline which makes your body get really good at producing less and clearing it faster. When you quit you have low dopamine and "ADHD". I didn't write the post in this link but here's an example of someone I've seen many bupropion reactions like: https://www.depressionforums.org/forums/topic/62488-wellbutrin-destroyed-my-soul/